The Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA) is pleased to announce the Symposium on Avoiding, Detecting and Preventing Counterfeit Electronic Parts. This symposium will be held December 2-3, 2009 at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. This will be the second year SMTA has teamed with CALCE (Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering) at the University of Maryland to coordinate this event. This symposium will be valuable to supply chain managers, component engineers, brand protection specialists, marketing and procurement policy makers, contract manufacturing managers, security specialists and other interested engineers. Our focus is to provide relevant information to the professionals that can be used for solving problems today while planning for a different business and technology environment in the future. Additions to the program for 2009 are two half-day workshops. The first workshop will cover Counterfeit Parts in the News and will be led by JPL/NASA. A second workshop topic will be announced in September. For more information on the Symposium on Avoiding, Detecting and Preventing Counterfeit Electronic Parts visit http://www.smta.org/education/symposia/symposia.cfm#counterfeit. The technical program will be finalized in early September. For more information on the symposium contact Melissa Serres Marx at 952-920-7682 or melissa@smta.org.